Delete Issue Permissions with Project Roles

Jamie Stanczyk

Good morning! I am having issues with my current permission scheme in the Jira Cloud environment. I created a new project role, that has all of the same permissions as the default Project Administrator role, but removed the Adminster Projects, Manage Issue Layouts and Edit Workflows permissions. Everything else is the same, include this new project role having the Delete Issues permissions.

Here is where things go weird. The users in this role are able to delete work items in the List view of the company-managed project and in the work item screen, but cannot delete the work item in the Backlog or All Work Views. They get the initial prompt asking if they want to delete the work item, but then receive a "Failed to Update: We were unable to make those changes. Try again, or view the items that failed the update" error message.

I have re-checked all of my project permissions and I cannot identify what I am doing wrong.

Jamie Stanczyk

Here is the explanation of the reported bug:

There’s a known issue in Jira Cloud where users with the Delete Issues permission (but without full admin permissions) can delete issues from the List view or the issue screen, but encounter errors when trying to delete from the Backlog or All Work views. The error message you described—"Failed to Update: We were unable to make those changes. Try again, or view the items that failed the update"—matches this scenario.

 

Here is the workaround per Atlassian Support:

Workaround

• Delete from the Issue Screen or List View: Continue deleting issues from the issue’s own screen or the List view, as you’ve been doing.
• Backlog View: If you need to delete from the Backlog, try using the triple dot menu on the issue itself (not bulk delete), as this sometimes works even when the main delete option fails.